Stuff

14/09/2009

Sega Dreamcast, happy (belated) birthday

The beloved Sega Dreamcast was released in North America just over 10 years ago and although us Europeans had to wait a little longer to get our hands on this brilliant piece of gaming hardware it still seems that 09/09 (the North American Release date) is as good a date for an anniversary.

I personally never owned a Dreamcast during its short but eventful life as I was firmly in the Playstation camp at this point wating for the PS2 to arrive with baited breath. However I did pick up a Dreamcast two years ago and despite only owning a small collection of games I fell love this machine.

So here are some of the games I own and rate for the venerable Dreamcast:

Chu Chu Rocket

A simple but extremely deep puzzler. Help your mice get to their rocket ships by avoiding various obstacles and the dreaded cats. despite having been stuck on the same level for over a year now I still come back to this fantastic game.

Soul Calibur

The first fighting game I ever really enjoyed. I never owned a SNES so I also never really got Street Fighter II fever. but Soul Calibur just seemed so easy to get into. Despite its easy learing curve, the more you played the deeper the gameplay became and you soon found yourself stringing together combos that were not only devastatingly effective but also visually very beautiful. Still one of my favourite fighting games.

Triggerheart Excelica

I first played this on Xbox Live and loved it so much i just had to get my hands on the Dreamcast version. It was the game that got me back into shooters after a very long (since my old C64 and Amiga days) hiatus. The visual style and characterisation of this Japanese shmup is just wonderful. Add in the anchor mechanic and you have a manic shooter with a novel twist. I prefer the Dreamcast version over the Xbox live version although I'm not sure why.

Giga Wing

Another manic shooter from Japan, this one is about as OTT as they come though. It is very easy to become disorientated while playing this game as the amount of bullets on screen is overwhelming but the feeling of accomplishment upon completing a level that has denied you for so long or in beating your high score is a rare thing in modern videogames. can be found fairly cheep too.

So this is the handful of games that get repeated play in my Dreamcast, I know there are allot more quality titles that I want to pick up and I'm sure I will at a later date (I'm looking at you Mars Matrix and Border down!)